Dear ACS Families,

Welcome back! Despite all of the challenges, uncertainty, and variability of the situation, the reopening of school for full in-person learning has gone remarkably well. I've been outside for student drop-off and pick-up each day, and it has been so nice to see our students' happiness and excitement about being back on campus. Our faculty and staff have somehow found ways to get to school each day; their commitment and enthusiasm have been amazing. Thanks to our families for your patience and your support during these very difficult times. This has truly been a team effort.

I wanted to update you on a few important items:

First, we are doing our very best to keep Covid out of our community and when there are positive cases to shut down the possibility of spread. We are relying quite heavily on social distancing and requiring masks when students are on campus. I know that mask-wearing is particularly challenging for smaller children, and our faculty are working regular mask-breaks into the schedule. We will have more flexible policies about mask-wearing when students are outside, but only if they can maintain social distancing. We need to be very conservative in our approach initially, but we hope to be able to modify and adapt our approach during the school year as circumstances permit. So far, these measures have worked quite well. Our primary goal is to keep students at school and learning in person, and we are doing everything possible to achieve this.

The electricity issue continues to be a challenge for us. By cutting our use of air conditioning to the four warmest hours of the day, we have been able to achieve a significant reduction in our diesel fuel consumption. Not only does this ensure that we will have fuel to run the campus, but it has helped to reduce a very significant fresh dollar expense, as diesel suppliers are requiring payment in fresh dollars. On a positive note, keeping the classroom windows open all day, even while the AC is running, allows for excellent circulation of fresh air, which is another weapon in our battle against Covid. Finally, we have placed fans in all classrooms and offices to make those areas more comfortable when the AC is not on.

The financial crisis has had a devastating impact on the economic well-being of our faculty and staff. In an effort to provide some immediate relief, the Finance Committee of the ACS Board of Trustees recently approved a proposal to pay all faculty and staff 20% of their salaries in fresh dollars. While this important measure will not make our faculty and staff economically whole compared to where they were before the crisis, it does significantly improve their local purchasing power. Earlier this summer, we also committed to an additional subsidy of our employees' health insurance plan. While this has enabled our health insurance coverage to remain virtually unchanged from last year, it has come at a significantly higher cost to ACS. Insurance companies, too, are asking that a large portion of healthcare premiums are paid in fresh dollars.

Unfortunately, the growing number of additional fresh dollar expenses has drained the fresh dollar revenue we received from the ancillary fee. We are hoping to raise additional fresh dollars through an Emergency Faculty and Staff Relief Fund, which has been set up through our Alumni and Development Office. All fresh dollars contributed to this fund from ACS alumni, parents, and other friends of our school will go directly toward supporting our faculty and staff.

Finally, we are aware that the traffic for drop off each morning is difficult. IC is not providing bus service to start the year, and this has increased the number of cars dropping off each morning. We are working with the IC security team as well as the IC administration to alleviate the traffic situation.

I apologize for the length of this e-mail, but I want to keep ACS families informed about all we are doing to keep school open and to support our faculty and staff. Although this will no doubt be a very challenging year, we are confident that it will be a very good year for our students.

Sincerely,